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darkerside parent
It can also mean they properly assessed the risk and got incredibly unlucky
pm215
In that case they would not change their mind, though.
ptero
Not necessarily. Having a painful accident often leads people to a position of "even if I know a mishap is very unlikely I am not doing this again".
pm215
I think that falls into the "did not correctly assess the risk beforehand" bucket (and as you say and as the post I was replying to said, this is quite common). If they had correctly assessed "this is going to be really awful if it happens such that want to rule out even an unlikely possibility of it" they ought to not want to do it the first time.
ptero
In this definition I think virtually no one assesses the risk correctly. It is a human nature to overreact (post-factum) to an unlikely event to the extent that most languages have a dedicated saying ("having burned yourself on hot milk, one now blows on water" is the non-English version I heard as a kid).

No offense intended, but I also yours is not a good definition of "correctly assessing the risk". If it were followed, an extremely unlikely possibility of a horrible outcome would stop people from doing most optional things. For example, a risk of a horrible disease while on travel will lead to no travel.

Personalities differ and there are daredevils and scaredy cats that differ in pre-event risk assessments, but post (unlikely and traumatic) event assessment change is pretty universal. My 2c.

pm215
Correctly assessing the risk doesn't mean "I don't do anything that has an unlikely possibility of a horrible outcome", it can mean "I decide that I'm OK with that possibility and do it anyway, because I think the benefits outweigh the possible drawbacks". If you then do get unlucky and catch a nasty disease, that should not change your post-recovery decisions about going on holiday a second time: your risk/reward tradeoff should still be "I'm OK with the possibility of a bad outcome".

Re "It is a human nature to overreact (post-factum) to an unlikely event" -- yes, absolutely agreed. This is what I mean by saying that humans as a species are terrible at assessing low-probability risks. That most people change their view just means that most people both underestimate the likelihood of low probability events that haven't happened to anybody they know, and overestimate the likelihood of low probability events that have happened to somebody they know.

ptero
Agreed on both the definition of the optimal assessment and on the fact that the humans are bad at it. I actually think this (humans being bad at it) is good for the civilization as it helps people try things they would be too scared to do if they properly assessed all the potential outcomes with their probabilities.

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